NSW:Protests drove solar backflip: O'Farrell

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell says protests from the community and his own back bench convinced him to drop plans to slash the solar rebate with retrospective legislation.

"We've heard the community, we've heard our back bench and I've got to say, they've done a pretty good job of representing the community," he told Macquarie Radio on Tuesday.

The government's solar legislation was not supported by the Christian Democrats or the Shooters and Fishers, whose votes were needed in the upper house of parliament.

"I spoke again yesterday to the crossbenchers ... and they made clear that if it involved rewriting of contracts, retrospective changes to contracts it was not going to get through the upper house," Mr O'Farrell said.

"On the basis of all that, we've accepted the reality, which is we can't proceed with this."

The solar rebate will now stay at 60 cents per kilowatt hour for existing subscribers who feed power into the grid, rather than being slashed to 40 cents.